A night to remember
by hobgoblin123
Summary: Almea, Gerald and King Gannon spend a very special night together. Threesome, rated 'M' for a reason (porn warning, lol).


**A night to remember**

Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.

Warnings: explicit slash and het

Credits: The title was borrowed from Walter Lord's well-known book about the Titanic disaster, also made into a movie in 1958.

A/N 1: As this was originally intended for the Porn Battle XVI, it's one of my naughtier 'literary' outputs. Please beware if you can't stomach stories involving more than the traditional two sexual partners or a man cheating on his wife. Because that's exactly what Gerald does when having it off with his king, isn't it?

A/N 2: Well, I have to admit that working at this fic was great fun. Maybe I should try to become a professional porn writer one day, lol. From what I've seen of the stuff sold for serious money on Amazon, you don't exactly have to qualify for the Booker Prize. And let's not forget the interesting side benefits (winks at Morgana)...

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With an exasperated sigh, Almea Tarrant pushed back the coverlets and sat up. The moonlight was so bright that she could have read the historical romance novel placed on her bedside table without straining her eyes, but it weren't Erna's satellites which caused sleep to flee her like a prey animal startled by the scent of an approaching predator.

There was no denying that King Gannon openly preferred her husband to his other courtiers and showered him with favours, a not altogether astounding development with regard to the fact that his brilliant strategist had won his wars for him and saved his crown in the process. As a result, his services for king and country had earned Gerald a stellar ascent. From a virtual nobody, he had risen to the top of the food-chain at the tender age of just eighteen. Knight of the Realm, Premier of the Order of the Golden Flame, an elite troop newly created by the king himself a mere six months ago, and Neocount of Merentha, his ennoblement an honour which had finally rendered it possible for him to raise a family. Only the sky seemed to be the limit for the man she loved more than life itself.

All things considered, it didn't come as quite a surprise that such a success had brought grudgers to the scene, long-serving court cringers and spoiled brats of noble descent alike who couldn't stomach being excelled by a youth who had completely cut himself off from his own family and had adopted the name of his wife on the day of their marriage, something quite unheard of at the end of the dark ages.

To this very day, she had tried to convince herself that certain rumours concerning the nature of the relationship between her husband and their ruler were completely unfounded, mere spawns of said envy and mistrust towards a man who was considered a freak of nature by many of the courtiers at the very best. Gerald's strange powers had been alienating him from human society right from the moment of his birth, and his aloofness and sarcastic humour were an additional factor in making him rather unpopular among the royal household.

Within their own four walls, or what counted for 'own' until the wondrous fairy tale castle he had designed all by himself would be completed by the end of the year, things were completely different. Although he wasn't given to sweet-talk, Gerald was a caring husband, polite, considerate and honourable to his very bones, and he performed his marital duties with an enthusiasm which left nothing to be desired. Remembering the light in his eyes when he had found out that she was with child, she simply couldn't picture that the very man who had scooped her up with a laugh born from sheer delight and carried her to their bed like a fragile not porcelain doll would stoop so low as to have a secret love affair, whether with a member of the same sex or another woman.

But be that as it may, her trust slowly but surely being undermined by the pitying glances and hushed whispers behind her back, the poisonous seeds of suspicion had taken root in her soul at long last, growing and branching out until she couldn't tell truth from lies any longer. Considering the positions of the moons, it had to be past midnight now, and by now she harboured serious doubts that the king and her spouse were still discussing their next campaign against the few remaining rebels adamantly refusing to acknowledge Gannon as the rightful ruler of the eastern lands.

Relinquishing any thought of finding sleep in her state of agitation, she got up and padded over to their intricately carved alteroak wardrobe. Even though it was already early spring, the floor tiles were icy beneath her bare feet, but the cold, hard knot inside her stomach had nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature.

Wrapping her arms around herself in a foolish attempt to banish the chill spawned by a weird sense of foreboding, she gazed at her reflection in the precious head-high mirror with its border of delicately etched arabesques, a wedding present of Gannon himself. Even wearing just a simple nightgown and lacking all those decorative cosmetics currently so very much in vogue with the other court ladies, the young woman staring back at her was simply breathtaking. Her figure was still slender but yet curvy in all the right spots and her comely face a perfect oval framed by a veritable waterfall of reddish golden curls hanging all the way down to her waistline. But the brown doe eyes had a haunted look she hadn't perceived in them ever before.

The Neocountess of Merentha sighed again. Of course it was very well possible that her misgivings had no real background at all but were just the result of a devilish cocktail of malicious gossip and her own vivid imagination. From what she had heard, she wouldn't be the first pregnant woman prone to blowing insignificant trifles out of proportion. Gerald had already explained to her how the hormonal changes in her body could affect her psyche, causing the infamous mood swings which were rightly feared by all fathers-to-be. Or almost all, to be precise.

Her own husband hadn't seemed to be daunted by the prospects in the least. Calm and composed as usual, he had lectured her on the benefits of certain herbal potions and the triggering of the body's own serotonin output by means of a Working as if he weren't a novice in the business of becoming parents just like her. He was truly one of a kind, the fairy prince she had been daydreaming about since she had first discovered that boys weren't just a nuisance solely created for the purpose of hiding not frogs under her coverlet and generally creating as much havoc as humanly possible without getting a good beating. Not that this threat had ever stopped her brothers from being up to no good, but at least the practical jokes of those little pests had been utterly devoid of the appalling cruelty Gerald had experienced at the hands of his siblings and his brutish father.

He hadn't told her much. But she had seen the scars on his back, long, crisscrossing ridges of fibrous tissue marring his otherwise flawless skin. Beholding them for the first time in their wedding night, she had felt a surge of loathing welling up inside her so intense that she had wished nothing more than giving those bastards a taste of their own medicine, an impulse somewhat unbefitting a noblewoman, let alone the wife of the very man who believed that the nature of the One God was Mercy and his Word forgiveness (WTNF, p. 353).

His own capacity for forgiving the atrocities committed on him was an altogether different kettle of fish, though. Registering the barely veiled hatred in his voice and the way his hands had balled into fists on the rare occasions he had talked about his relatives at all, she didn't doubt that it was as far beyond him as sprouting wings and taking to the sky. May the God of their faith have mercy upon them if Gerald ever set his brilliant mind on avenging what had been done to him. He certainly wouldn't.

Her body tingling with nervous tension, Almea started to pace the bedroom, back and forth and back and forth until she thought her foot prints must certainly leave a trail on the silk rug. The minutes seemed to crawl by at a snail's pace for another half an hour, and still there was no sign of her husband. Suddenly dead set on getting to the bottom of things, she slipped into her shoes and flung her richly embroidered velvet cloak around her shoulders. Come what may, she needed to face up to the facts, even if her entire world would go to pieces as a result of her inquisitiveness.

As silent as a shadow, she wandered through the deserted corridors of Jaggonath Castle until she came to the king's private study he preferred to the official consultation room downstairs unless he had to accommodate the complete privy council or a delegation of his subjects asking for a favour. Flickering candlelight shone from under the door, but however much she was pricking up her ears, she couldn't hear a single word, and her resolve began to waver. For as long as she could remember, her parents had been exemplifying that a happy marriage was based on mutual trust besides respect and tolerance, and she surely had no right to spy on the man she had promised to respect and honour on her wedding day. But just when she was coming close to turning on her heels and going back to their rooms without being any the wiser, a low noise arrested her attention.

The Neocountess froze to the metaphorical pillar of salt, not even breathing. And there it was again, a barely audible moan from a male throat which didn't exactly sound as if King Gannon and his favourite courtier were spending their time with discussing war tactics. A dagger to her heart couldn't have hurt worse, and she protectively folded her arms across her abdomen without even realizing what she was doing.

Unsettlingly close to succumbing to a bout of naked panic, the young woman forced herself to draw a deep breath and pondered her options. If she and her old wet nurse Moira packed only the bare essentials, they could be on their way with a little bit of luck before her unfaithful husband returned to their quarters. Hearing about her... mishap, her parents would doubtlessly welcome her back with open arms. If they ever arrived at her childhood home alive and in one piece instead of falling prey to a hungry demonling, that is.

As an alternative, she could learn a lesson from Queen Merissa whose icy disdain for Gerald was a bit more comprehensible all at once, go back to her lonely bed without creating a stir and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. After all, it was still possible that there was a harmless explanation for what she had just overheard. Maybe the king's shoulder wound he had received in the last battle was plaguing him again, or her overactive imagination had just played a trick on her, causing her to mistake an innocent yawn for an expression of pleasure.

_Whom do you try to fool now, Almea?_ she thought with no small amount of exasperation. _It was a moan, and it didn't escape from Gannon's throat. After being married for five months, you know very well how your husband sounds when he's... enjoying himself. And now stop sticking your head in the sand and behave like the grown-up woman you are and not like a frightened child._

Ever so carefully, she opened the door a crack and peeked through it with abated breath, just to be confronted with a tableau which caused her jaw to drop several inches.

As naked as on the day of their birth, the two men were perched on a big leather armchair, so lost in their own world that they were utterly oblivious to her intrusion. Gerald was kneeling over his king face to face, his long, slender fingers massaging his rather impressive erection in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Gannon didn't reciprocate the favour but let his hands wander over his lover's flanks and buttocks instead, occasionally straying to the most private place between them his wife had never touched in all the months of their marriage.

Gerald sighed, shifted his weight in a wordless plead for more, and the royal son of a bitch who'd better warm his queen's bed than making out with another man chuckled softly. Evidently getting the nonverbal message, he picked up a crystal flask from the side table, poured a generous amount of an oily substance on his palm and spread the thick liquid all over his digits.

The breath hitching in her throat, Almea waited for them to close around her husband's private parts and stroke as he had taught her to do as a part of their foreplay, but she had been thoroughly mistaken. After casually petting his lover's balls and perineum, Gannon parted his nether cheeks once again and pushed his oiled middle finger inside him without further ado.

The Neocountess of Merentha couldn't help but stare in wide-eyed incomprehension. Of course she had heard about men who rather consorted with another male than with a woman. _Accursed_ _Sodomites_ their elderly parish priest had called them while ranting against those unnatural practices one sunny Sunday morning roundabout three years ago. Glad that his sermon wasn't mind-numbingly dull for once, she had listened to his tirade in rapt attention, very much to her parents' dismay who had understandably feared that this kind of topic wasn't quite suitable for the ears of their teenage daughter.

At that time, her prospect of said _practices_ hadn't gone beyond holding hands in the moonlight, reciting love poems and exchanging chaste kisses. But although her knowledge of carnal matters had broadened lately, she wouldn't have imagined in her wildest dreams that they were actually entailing what she couldn't bring herself to voice, not even in her own mind, let alone that her obsessively neat husband would ever participate in suchlike activities.

But she should have seen it coming. The veil of denial finally drawn away from her eyes, she now remembered very well that Gerald had indeed tried to incorporate some kind of anal sex into their love play. Thank goodness he had never touched her there. But one night, he had guided her fingers to his entrance, intently observing her reaction until she had felt like one of his experimental animals. In equal parts embarrassed, clueless about what was being expected of her and slightly disgusted, she had snatched her hand away as if she had burned herself, and to her relief he hadn't repeated the manoeuvre ever again. Just to indulge his inclinations elsewhere. _What a blithering idiot you've been_, she chastised herself. _An utterly naive country bumpkin, closing your eyes to the truth until life really spells it out for you. How could you have ever been so blind?_

Gannon's low voice brought her back to a here and now no less unsettling than her frantic mental ramblings. "You're getting me too close, beloved," he murmured. "Just stop for a while and let me watch you come. It turns me on like hell."

'Let me watch you come'? For the life of her, the young woman couldn't imagine how such a feat could be possible due to the utter lack of the direct stimulation usually required for achieving an orgasm. But whatever that wretched middle finger was doing inside him, it apparently wasn't wasted on Gerald in the least. His head tilted back in rapture, he was clinging to his lover like a lifeline now, and his panting and half-stifled sighs and whimpers left no doubt that he was rapidly approaching the point of no return.

His skin was so creamy pale against Gannon's bronze tan that it seemed to glow in the light of the full moon falling through the arched window, his frame so lithe and graceful in contrast to the brawny man sitting between his spread legs that it looked as if a being made from sheer stardust had deigned to take up with a mere mortal, and she couldn't help but admiring the surreal beauty of the scene.

Even a blind man would have seen that King Gannon shared her sentiments. His eyes never left the angelic features hovering above him, and the expression of longing and tender affection on his handsome face showed quite clearly that at least for him this wasn't just about lust but about something much deeper.

Before she could even halfway digest this revelation, Gerald tensed up and dug his finger-nails deeply into his lover's shoulders. "Faster," he shouted, his face contorted into a grimace of raw, unadulterated pleasure. "Oh God, I'm coming. Oh GOD..."

It seemed to take ages until he stopped shuddering and jerking in the throes of his climax, but it wasn't over yet. After their wedding, Almea had soon found out that he was well capable of making love to her more than just once a night, something not altogether uncommon for a man this young if rumours were to be believed. But he had always needed a, however short, period of recovery until he had felt up for an encore. Tonight, the rules were apparently suspended, though, and she watched in utmost fascination as his eyes glazed over again not even three minutes later and his breath sped up to short, ragged gasps.

Strangely, she could feel the tension rising once again in the lean body so utterly familiar to her as if it were her own, could sense the desperate want for release on a visceral level unlike anything she had thought possible on the human plane, and a surge of arousal welled up inside her very much against her will.

Up to that point, Gerald had stayed rather passive, letting his sexual partner do all the work. But losing himself in the sensations deep down in his abdomen, he started to move his hips back and forth with increasing speed now, his thrusts becoming more and more erratic by the second just like the numerous times when he had been an inch short of spilling his seed inside her. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he panted forth a string of obscenities which caused her cheeks to flame with embarrassment. Never ever she would have imagined that someone as cultivated and restrained as her husband could command such a repertoire of dirty words, let alone applying them. Not even in the heat of passion.

But then Gerald came again, biting down on the back of his sword hand in a vain attempt to stifle his screams of pleasure, and the throbbing, urgent need between her legs she had forced herself to ignore till then intensified to a nigh to intolerable intensity. Somehow, she managed to resist the overpowering urge to touch herself where no decent woman was supposed to and to hell with the taboos of a restrictive society by a very small margin, but she couldn't quite suppress the gasp forcing itself out of her constricted throat.

Still basking in the last aftershocks of his climax, her husband payed no attention whatsoever to the treacherous sound but just continued to rock his pelvis, if at a more measured pace. His mental absence was so unusual for a man whose senses appeared almost inhumanly keen at times that it told her more about the magnitude of his lust than his moans and lewd words. But his lover's dark eyes darted in her direction and fixed on her with a much too knowing expression for her peace of mind.

If she had ever cared to imagine this nightmarish situation, she would have expected a fair amount of awkwardness; apologies, justifications and pleads to maintain silence about what she had just witnessed for the sake of the kingdom. Maybe even more or less veiled threats. After all, Gannon was the absolute ruler of the eastern lands, and although she had never heard of him abusing his power, he could very well destroy her and her family with a single word if he so chose. At the very least, putting an end to the unspeakable act he was committing on her spouse after registering her presence would have been somewhat appropriate all things considered. But nothing of that sort came to pass. His digit still inside Gerald as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he just beckoned her closer, and she obeyed like one of the puppets on a string she had admired so much in her childhood days.

Moving as if in a trance, she approached the arm chair on unsteady legs, just to bump against the side table. The grating noise finally snapped the adept out of his abandon. At first, the grey eyes staring up to her were still in a faraway place, but then she could see realization dawn in them. And horror.

"Almea, I..." he whispered, his face a chalky white mask of remorse all at once, but Gannon silenced him with a finger on his lips. His arm was still stretched out towards her in what could only be an invitation to join them; for what purpose, she couldn't even begin to fathom. Everything inside her screamed at her to either throw a tantrum right on the spot or make a bolt for it, but try as she might, she couldn't bring her limbs to move. Only her right hand rose seemingly on its own account ever so slowly until it touched the king's.

Broad, calloused fingers closed around her own so much smaller ones, coating them in a layer of oil while gently massaging them one by one. It was a strangely sensual sensation which went straight to her loins, causing her blood to pump faster in her veins and a spot nestling between the folds of her sex to tingle in breathless anticipation.

Registering her reaction, something shifted in those beautiful grey orbs she could have stared into for a thousand years. Utter dejection made way for a faint glimmer of hope, and suddenly the eerie rapport between them that had kindled the fire in her abdomen in the first place was back in full force. _I'm sorry_, it screamed, but also an unmistakable notion of relief that the cards were finally on the table and he wouldn't be forced to hide the truth from her any longer.

Sharing Gerald's anguish over eventually being forced to choose between her and the man who had rescued him from the clutches of his family and had enabled him to lead a dignified life in the process almost brought tears to her eyes, but what really gave her some food for thought was the unslaked desire, the burning hunger for more she could still sense thrumming deep down inside him in spite of the nasty shock her sudden appearance out of the blue must surely have given him.

"A dutiful wife should be devoted to pleasing her husband in every respect of the word, Almea," her mother had told her on more occasions that she actually cared to count, a somewhat astounding statement for a woman as resolute as her. But this wasn't just about doing Gerald a favour by allowing him to act out his needs. Like in one of the old fairy tales from their mother planet Earth, daring a peek into the forbidden chamber had broadened her horizon in a way she hadn't foreseen. Whatever some narrow-minded bigots were saying, a consensual act of love between two - or more - people of legal age couldn't be condemnable. And love it was without a sliver of doubt, so all encompassing that it didn't shy away from welcoming her in its arms.

Returning her husband's tentative smile, she didn't object when their king placed the back of her hand in his upturned palm and nodded invitingly. Gerald's body opened for her without any resistance whatsoever, and she marvelled at the tightness and heat surrounding her. Gannon's middle finger was right behind hers now, gently steering her inside up to her knuckle and then curling in a kind of come-hither motion, forcing her own digit to bend, as well.

Instead of the satiny smoothness she had expected, her fingertip brushed a small bump the size of a not walnut, and a violent jolt passed through her spouse. Fearing that she had caused him pain due to her inexperience, she tried to withdraw, but King Gannon grasped her wrist like a vise and urged her on relentlessly, making her hit the very same spot again and again until Gerald's thighs started to tremble and he opened his mouth for a throaty moan.

The part of his anatomy her brothers had been wont to call a 'cock' in the absence of adults who would have doubtlessly given them a good talking to for using suchlike foul language was twitching now at her every motion as if it had a life on its own, and drops of a clear liquid were forming at its tip before dripping down onto his lover's naked belly. Even she with her poor knowledge of those matters couldn't fail to notice that he was getting close again, and seeing him thus, so lost in his pleasure that he was sobbing into Gannon's broad shoulders now without giving a damn for his pride and dignity, was a more powerful turn-on than she could have ever imagined.

Acting purely on her intuition, Almea wrapped her arm around him and intensified the stimulation, pressing down harder and rubbing rapidly back and forth, a course of action which ripped another hoarse moan from his throat and caused his internal muscles to contract almost painfully around her. Pale fingers loosened their hold on the king, dug into the soft flesh of her buttocks so hard that it would certainly leave bruises, but completely and utterly absorbed in helping the man meaning the world to her to his third climax in a row, she didn't even feel it.

Then it happened. Crying out her name, he came in her arm in long, shuddering spasms which made her knees go weak with longing. As soon as the rhythmical pulse inside him had finally calmed down to an occasional faint flutter, Gannon carefully pulled their fingers out and whispered something into his ear which earned him a slow, languid smile.

When the men disentangled themselves from each other and got to their feet, the Neocountess of Merentha was convinced that this would be the end of the matter, but she was quickly put right. His eyes glittering in the moonlight, Gerald rendered her naked with long-practiced ease, scooped her up and gently lowered her onto the huge alteroak writing desk dominating the room. At the very next moment, he was between her spread legs and slipped inside her swollen wetness with a low, wistful sigh.

The sensation of him filling her to the brim, harder and needier than he had ever been before, was bliss beyond words, and she thought that maybe this one time it would be enough for her to find release. But it wasn't. As so very often before, however he varied the angle and depth of penetration and the rhythm of his thrusts, her body stubbornly refused to do play along, and she bit down on her lower lip in order to suppress a groan rather born from sheer frustration than from pleasure.

Just when she was coming close to resigning herself to her fate, Gannon grasped her hand again, guiding her with gentle force to the unknown country she had never dared to explore so far. A wave of shame threatened to quench the last sparks of her arousal, but then her trembling fingers touched a tiny nub near the the front junction of her labia minora, and she was lost. The direct contact was almost too much, but circling it slowly with a fingertip wet with her own fluids felt so good that she simply couldn't bring herself to stop. And she didn't want to, anyway. So many rules had been broken that night that one more wouldn't make much of a difference.

Her entire self concentrated on stimulating the spot where all her nerve-endings seemed to converge, she payed only marginal attention to Gannon stepping behind his lover and burying himself inside him to the hilt with one single thrust. Her finger circled faster and faster around it, sped up in unison with her breath and heartbeat in a frenzy of desire, and half out of her mind with naked want, she raised her legs and locked them around her husband's back.

It had never been like this before. As her vaginal muscles were starting to contract around the rock-hard erection inside her, she could feel it slipping partly out of her, just to stretch her narrowing channel again and again until she thought she couldn't take it anymore. The combination of her own stroking and Gerald's rhythmic pelvic motions propelled her arousal to a level she hadn't known existed. Moaning in ecstasy, she flexed her thighs and buttocks and wrapped her legs tighter around him, using the little leverage she had to move with him with rising urgency.

Higher and higher the tide carried them, and it didn't take long until they were all panting and writhing against each other as if they were one single organism instead of three individuals connected by love and lust. When the sweet sensations inside her finally crested and the first wave of mind-blowing pleasure tore through her abdomen, she threw back her head and let out a long, piercing scream without giving a damn for eventual eavesdroppers.

And still Gerald didn't ease up but continued to pump in and out of her pulsating channel as if there were no tomorrow. Maybe it wouldn't be. With regard to the way her heart was hammering inside her chest and she was gasping for air like a fish out of water, death during intercourse didn't seem to be an altogether far fetched idea. But it didn't really matter. Nothing mattered save the hardness inside her, her throbbing sweet spot and her adored husband watching her with an expression not unlike the one she had witnessed on Gannon's face what felt like an eternity ago.

Her heart and soul flowing over with tenderness, she tangled her fingers into his long, golden-brown hair and pulled him into a kiss. Gerald's entire body was shuddering under the force of his lover's thrusts, and one didn't have to be a brainiac to realize that at least the king wouldn't last much longer. And not just the king. Meanwhile, she could sense her next orgasm approaching in rapid strides if her somewhat limited experience was anything to go by. Just like the previous time, the little source of joy beneath her fingertip was almost non-palpable now although the lustful sensations radiating from it were increasing by the second.

Whimpering into her husband's mouth as if suffering unbearable agonies, she intensified the stimulation, rubbing as hard and fast as she could until her toes curled and her hips bucked up and down spasmodically. From far, far away she could hear somebody shout the adept's name again and again and her own voice screaming "oh God, love, fuck me, fuck me..." like the most wanton harlot, could feel Gerald's perfect teeth leaving bloodshot marks on her shoulder as he convulsed on top of her, but everything paled against the rhythmic contractions inside her.

Quite a while later, laying in her own bed and gazing at the man sleeping peacefully at her side, Almea smiled. This was certainly a night to remember, but what could have led straight to disaster had proved to bring them closer together instead, something she was deeply grateful for. As long as she was the leading lady in her beloved's heart, she didn't mind sharing him with their ruler every now and then. And there was no denying that Gannon had taught her a few rather interesting tricks she verily intended to take advantage of in the future. Still smiling, she snuggled up to her husband, placed a chaste peck on his cheek and closed her eyes for a well-deserved nap.


End file.
